Lee HS Enrollment Falls Below 1700

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:TJ also pulls from all of NoVa. A magnet IB school simply won't fill to capacity, especially one that only pulls from a handful of HSs. I assume that Robinson and Marshall would not be converted to AP?

Creative proposals are good for discussion. Not for actual implementation.

Insider here. Yeah, no. It would be a regional IB center.

And I cannot emphasize this enough -- even looking at actual seats among the 7 schools, you would have 70-80 percent immediate capacity without even considering the additional interest in the stand-alone IB Middle and High school. The county that did this (converted a middle and high school to an IB only lottery school) had immediate full capacity and a 30 percent wait list. For the first year. Now, it runs at 100 percent capacity and has a waitlist that is twice the length of its enrolled student body. Popularity isn't an issue, here. Politics, yes. Competing priorities, yes.

[Anonymous]

Key's numbers are slated to increase by almost 20% next year if the projections are accurate. It will be interesting to see if a) it really happens and b) those kids stick around to go to Lee or not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:TJ also pulls from all of NoVa. A magnet IB school simply won't fill to capacity, especially one that only pulls from a handful of HSs. I assume that Robinson and Marshall would not be converted to AP?

Creative proposals are good for discussion. Not for actual implementation.

I don't know how many fingers you have, but this is more than a handful for most of us:

Hayfield
Edison
South County
Mount Vernon
Annandale
West Potomac
West Springfield

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:TJ also pulls from all of NoVa. A magnet IB school simply won't fill to capacity, especially one that only pulls from a handful of HSs. I assume that Robinson and Marshall would not be converted to AP?

Creative proposals are good for discussion. Not for actual implementation.

I don't know how many fingers you have, but this is more than a handful for most of us:

Hayfield
Edison
South County
Mount Vernon
Annandale
West Potomac
West Springfield

It's only part of the county, 7 out of 22 high schools. Does it make sense to you? It doesn't make sense to me, but I'm only a parent, not an expert.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:TJ also pulls from all of NoVa. A magnet IB school simply won't fill to capacity, especially one that only pulls from a handful of HSs. I assume that Robinson and Marshall would not be converted to AP?

Creative proposals are good for discussion. Not for actual implementation.

I don't know how many fingers you have, but this is more than a handful for most of us:

Hayfield
Edison
South County
Mount Vernon
Annandale
West Potomac
West Springfield

It's only part of the county, 7 out of 22 high schools. Does it make sense to you? It doesn't make sense to me, but I'm only a parent, not an expert.

I just ran the numbers. It would require about 10% of the freshmen at the eight schools affected to apply to fill up a freshman class at "New Lee."

If it were held out as a local IB magnet, it could attract significant attention. There are years when over 30% of the 8th graders at Carson MS apply to TJHHST.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:TJ also pulls from all of NoVa. A magnet IB school simply won't fill to capacity, especially one that only pulls from a handful of HSs. I assume that Robinson and Marshall would not be converted to AP?

Creative proposals are good for discussion. Not for actual implementation.

I don't know how many fingers you have, but this is more than a handful for most of us:

Hayfield
Edison
South County
Mount Vernon
Annandale
West Potomac
West Springfield

It's only part of the county, 7 out of 22 high schools. Does it make sense to you? It doesn't make sense to me, but I'm only a parent, not an expert.

I just ran the numbers. It would require about 10% of the freshmen at the eight schools affected to apply to fill up a freshman class at "New Lee."

If it were held out as a local IB magnet, it could attract significant attention. There are years when over 30% of the 8th graders at Carson MS apply to TJHHST.

This times a million. I am zoned for Edison, but I would send my kids to a IB magnet middle/high in a minute. To me, the cohort of serious students, challenging curriculum, and sole focus on a college bound population sounds amazing. I hope the county does this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Historical perspective. I started at Lee in 1984. That year they had redistricted several West Springfield neighborhoods over to Lee. They did not grandfather siblings. There was not a big stink because back then the two High Schools were equivalents. We had 98% of graduates in my class go on to 4 year colleges. It was very competitive. Lee also had several State Championship sports teams---particularly dominated boys and girls HS soccer in VA throughout the 80s.

So what happened? Did they pull out some of the WS neighborhoods that were brought in? Did they redistrict other neighborhoods? Did Demographics drastically change? Demographics were about 20% Vietnamese (area directly surrounding Lee) and the rest Caucasian when I attended.

Demographics. Crime. Did you hear about the kidnapping/murder at the mall? They've fixed the mall, but it took years.

Boy, you are reaching back like 15-20 years! There was a kidnapping. I don't remember a murder. I think you are trying to make things worse than they are.

And can we just stop with the real estate arguments. Of course West Springfield is more desired than Lee (as a school). And by extension, West Springfield homes are more desirable (and yes, it costs more) than homes in the Lee pyramid. There is no legitimate argument to the contrary. The whole thrust of this thread is that no one will be zoned for Lee if the IB magnet plan takes hold. Those who are currently home owners in Lee pyrmaid, get a windfall by getting rezoned to WSHS or Hayfield or South County... .not so much for a rezone to Annandale. Sounds like the factors bringing Lee down were in play prior to the change in testing rules/ESOL/alternative programs -- but those changes are pushing it further into failing territory.

Maybe now is a good time to buy in Lee pyramid (closest to WSHS)! Make some $$.

A cold turkey switch to an IB magnet is a horrible plan.

There is simply not enough interest or demand for IB to fill a 2200 seat high school.

The rezoning that would need to be done to support this would be significant, resulting in around 20 elementary schools or more needing to be rezoned, along with overcrowding in all the receiving high schools.

Lee would not even be at half capacity if it were solely IB.

The logical path would be to close IB at those other area high schools, and create a school within a school for IB with Lee being the only option for that part of the county. This might just barely fill the current space available at Lee.

Then, if Interest grows over the next 4 years, gradually rezone one elementary at a time out of Lee, or just rezone neighborhoods from around its perimeter to minimize mass rezoning.

Going cold turkey on such an unpopular program as IB and expecting 500 kids per grade to magically want to switch to IB overnight is doubling down on poor planning.

Insider here. I've seen the enrollments and projections. We also followed the previous county that did this decommission and re-opening of an IB magnate. It's going to be more than full if it opens. Each feeder is allocated 70 seats per class, I believe in the preliminary modeling presentation I went to.

One of the interesting things was the survey data from the county that did this. Families who had previously refused or avoided the IB program (because it was used in local, poorer high school -- a school within a school model) flocked to the center because it was uniformly high performing, academically homogeneous, and had a college bound cohort. Suddenly IB was in high demand.

That is not happening at Marshall or Robinson.

No one can flock to Marshall...it is closed to transfers because it is over capacity.
https://marshallhs.fcps.edu/announcements/marshall-hs-closed-student-transfers-2018-2019-school-year

[Anonymous]

Just called one of the school board reps from the area.

They said that closing Lee and making it an IB magnet is not even remotely in the plans right now.

They also said to do this would require tremendous amounts of rezoning and that nothing would happen without public input and boundary studies, that would take a very long time, even years, just due to the sheer number of schools that would need to be rezoned.

They also said there are zero plans to close Lee or any of the low performing high schools

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Key's numbers are slated to increase by almost 20% next year if the projections are accurate. It will be interesting to see if a) it really happens and b) those kids stick around to go to Lee or not.

Key Middle doesn’t get mentioned much on this board. I have a student at Key and have been pleasantly surprised by the teachers and administrators there. We’re trying to plan for the HS years and I hope the future of Lee HS will be decided very soon. I wouldn’t want my kid to have to change schools during the middle of high school. My child will probably end up at Lee but I doubt will pursue the IB diploma. Being able to select AP classes based on strengths would better suit my student. Let’s hope the school board announces their plan soon so that parents and students can prepare.f

[Anonymous]

I'd rather go to a HS with 1,700 instead of 3,700. Fewer kids to compete against for top honors. Easier to graduate in the top 10% of your class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Key's numbers are slated to increase by almost 20% next year if the projections are accurate. It will be interesting to see if a) it really happens and b) those kids stick around to go to Lee or not.

Key Middle doesn’t get mentioned much on this board. I have a student at Key and have been pleasantly surprised by the teachers and administrators there. We’re trying to plan for the HS years and I hope the future of Lee HS will be decided very soon. I wouldn’t want my kid to have to change schools during the middle of high school. My child will probably end up at Lee but I doubt will pursue the IB diploma. Being able to select AP classes based on strengths would better suit my student. Let’s hope the school board announces their plan soon so that parents and students can prepare.f

Call Sandy Kaufax and ask her if this is in the pipeline.

I think fcps needs to expand AP at Lee to see what results that yields.

And they need to seriously consider moving all the adult non traditional students over to Bryant.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Key's numbers are slated to increase by almost 20% next year if the projections are accurate. It will be interesting to see if a) it really happens and b) those kids stick around to go to Lee or not.

Key Middle doesn’t get mentioned much on this board. I have a student at Key and have been pleasantly surprised by the teachers and administrators there. We’re trying to plan for the HS years and I hope the future of Lee HS will be decided very soon. I wouldn’t want my kid to have to change schools during the middle of high school. My child will probably end up at Lee but I doubt will pursue the IB diploma. Being able to select AP classes based on strengths would better suit my student. Let’s hope the school board announces their plan soon so that parents and students can prepare.f

Call Sandy Kaufax and ask her if this is in the pipeline.

I think fcps needs to expand AP at Lee to see what results that yields.

And they need to seriously consider moving all the adult non traditional students over to Bryant.

I mean Tammy Kaufax. Lol.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Key's numbers are slated to increase by almost 20% next year if the projections are accurate. It will be interesting to see if a) it really happens and b) those kids stick around to go to Lee or not.

Key Middle doesn’t get mentioned much on this board. I have a student at Key and have been pleasantly surprised by the teachers and administrators there. We’re trying to plan for the HS years and I hope the future of Lee HS will be decided very soon. I wouldn’t want my kid to have to change schools during the middle of high school. My child will probably end up at Lee but I doubt will pursue the IB diploma. Being able to select AP classes based on strengths would better suit my student. Let’s hope the school board announces their plan soon so that parents and students can prepare.f

Call Sandy Kaufax and ask her if this is in the pipeline.

I think fcps needs to expand AP at Lee to see what results that yields.

And they need to seriously consider moving all the adult non traditional students over to Bryant.

Lee has AP and IB courses. The results is low enrollment.

[Anonymous]

AP courses were added to Lee several years ago to stop pupil placement out.

[Anonymous]

If those 19 to 22 year old men were trying to work or volunteer at Lee HS or any other high school, they would not be allowed to participate in anything without a police background check, a sex offender check, references and clean fingerprints.

If these 19 to 22 year old men were dating these teen students as say, a volunteer with the school volleyball team, they would be fired or arrested.

But they are allowed unfettered access to the school and to the teenage students, some as young as 13 year old.